Summary

5 CDs / approx. 5 hours

In a summer community on the coast of New Hampshire at the turn of the last century, a girl is drawn into a passionate affair with a man nearly three times her age. Fortune's Rocks is the story of Olympia Biddeford, proveleged, well-educated, and mature beyond her years, and her affair with John Haskell, who not only is a physician, essayist, and champion of mill workers bot also a married man with children. Drawn inexorably together on the night of the summer solstice, the pair set in motion a series of events with far-reaching consequences for all involved.

Author Notes

Anita Shreve grew up in Dedham, Massachusetts. After receiving a bachelor's degree in English from Tufts University, she taught high school English for five years before becoming a full-time author. She worked for an English-language magazine in Nairobi and wrote for everything from Cosmopolitan magazine to The New York Times. Her nonfiction books included Remaking Motherhood and Women Together, Women Alone. Her novels included Eden Close, Strange Fits of Passion, Where or When, Fortune's Rocks, Rescue, Stella Bain, and The Stars are Fire. Several of her books were made into movies including The Pilot's Wife, Resistance, and The Weight of Water. She died from cancer on March 29, 2018 at the age of 71.

Booklist Review

Shreve's last novel, The Pilot's Wife (1998), was an Oprah pick, so her newest work is guaranteed a large and ready audience. A polished and magnetic, if formulaic, storyteller, Shreve takes her readers back to the turn of the last century and deep into the psyche of 15-year-old Olympia Biddeford, the only child of wealthy, cultured, and well-meaning parents. It's summer, and the Biddefords have moved for the season into their New Hampshire seaside cottage, which was once a convent. It faces the treacherous coast, which gives the place (and Shreve's novel) its haunting name, and this setting, just like every other seemingly casual detail, presages the high drama to come. It begins when Olympia suddenly senses that she is no longer a child. Even her father, who has been home-schooling her, detects something different about his smart and beautiful daughter as he instructs her to read a book of socially conscious essays written by Dr. John Haskell, who, along with his wife and children, will be their dinner guest. Olympia evinces no interest until she and Haskell--41, handsome, and intense--come face-to-face and are shot through with that awful current that signals love-at-first-sight. Their reckless affair precipitates a scandal of immense proportions, resulting in a harrowing separation and pregnancy. As sexy as their taboo liaisons are, Shreve is just as compelling in her descriptions of Olympia's solitary suffering in their aftermath, and in the rousing courtroom scenes that pave the way for a morally triumphant happy ending. This is exceptionally fine entertainment. --Donna SeamanAdult Books Young adult recommendations in this issue have been contributed by the Books for Youth editorial staff and by reviewers Sue-Ellen Beauregard, Nancy Bent, Ann Bouricius, Jane Byczek, Patty Engelmann, Diane Tixier Herald, Leone McDermott, Emily Melton, Karen Simonetti, Candace Smith, and Linda Waddle. Titles recommended for teens are marked with the following symbols: YA, for books of general YA interest; YA/C, for books with particular curriculum value; YA/L, for books with a limited teenage audience; YA/M, for books best suited to mature teens.

Publisher's Weekly Review

The time is the turn of the last century, the setting a rocky New Hampshire coastline resort area nicknamed "Fortune's Rocks." Olympia Biddeford, age 15, is walking the beach, feeling the first stirrings of her womanhood. The strong-willed daughter of an upstanding Boston couple, she soon "learns of desire" as she begins a passionate affair with a married writer, John Haskell, three times her age. From the moment they meet (he is a visiting friend of her father's), they experience a sexual sparkÄOlympia feels "liquid" in his presence. Soon, they fall into sinful trysting. Shreve (The Pilot's Wife) serves up these opening events with breathless immediacy. Once the plot gets a chance to developÄOlympia gets pregnant, gives up child, fights to get child backÄit settles down considerably, turning into a modernized The Scarlet Letter, a tale of a woman attaining feminist independence by living outside her period's societal mores. Reading, Brown (of TV's The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd) clearly has the most fun at the beginning, where the story's real heat and flushed excitement pours out. Listeners, too, may grow colder as the plot loses its torrid, forbidden edge. Based on the 1999 Little, Brown hardcover. (Dec.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Library Journal Review

Just bumped from January to December, Shreve's latestÄset at the end of the 19th centuryÄrelates wild young Olympia Biddleford's affair with a married doctor three times her age. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.